1969 National League Championship Series
The 1969 National League Championship Series was a best-of-five match-up between the Eastern Division champion New York Mets and the Western Division champion Atlanta Braves. The Mets defeated the Braves three games to none. They did not sweep a playoff series again until 2006 as they swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series in three games. At that time, the New York Mets became the fastest expansion team to win a National League pennant with only eight years of existence. It was also the first time that an expansion team has ever reached the playoffs in the history of Major League Baseball. Twenty-eight years later, in 1997, the Florida Marlins would break that record by reaching and winning the World Series with only five years of existence. Four years after the Marlins, the Arizona Diamondbacks would break that by reaching and winning the World Series in just their fourth year. Nolan Ryan played for the Mets at the time, but he did not play until Game 3, which was the first playoff victory of his career. The Braves finally avenged their 1969 loss 30 years later, by beating the Mets in that year's NLCS four games to two. Background This was the first year of the two-division format in Major League Baseball, after 99 consecutive years of straight non-divisional play. This was also the year of the "Miracle" Mets. The team had finished only one game better than last the year before, had never finished better than ninth in their seven-year history, were generally picked for third or fourth in the new six-team National League East Division, and were a 100-to-1 longshot to win the World Series. In third place and 10 games behind the division-leading Cubs on August 13, the Mets rallied to win the East Division title by eight games, winning exactly 100 games by the end of the regular season. The Braves, led by Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda and Phil Niekro, won a tough five-team race in the West Division, and were favored over the Mets as the playoff began, despite the Mets having won seven more games than the Braves. In what was expected to be a pitching-rich series, the teams combined for 42 runs, batted .292, hit eleven home runs, and posted a combined 5.94 ERA in the three games. Hank Aaron hit three home runs for the Braves, while Tommie Agee and Ken Boswell hit two each for the Mets. The Mets would also go on to beat the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series, four games to one. In which the Orioles were heavily-favored against the Mets in the World Series, as they won 108 games in the regular season and previously won the World Series in 1966. It was the first of five NL pennants for the Mets. The first two came in the only two NL series between 1969 and 1980 that did not feature either the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Philadelphia Phillies (the other being in 1973, where the Mets coincidentally where the NL Eastern Division champs that year). The Braves would not reach the NLCS again until 1982, and would not win a game in the NLCS until they won the pennant in 1991. It would be another four years before the Braves captured their only World Series championship as an Atlanta team.